Eugine_Nier comments on What is Eliezer Yudkowsky's meta-ethical theory? - Less Wrong

33 Post author: lukeprog 29 January 2011 07:58PM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 30 January 2011 08:33:39PM 1 point [-]

When you say "Nothing is fundamentally moral" can you explain what it would be like if something was fundamentally moral? If not, the term "fundamentally moral" is confused rather than untrue; it's not that we looked in the closet of fundamental morality and found it empty, but that we were confused and looking in the wrong closet.

BTW, in your post Are Your Enemies Innately Evil?, I think you are making a similar mistake about the concept of evil.

Comment author: ata 30 January 2011 09:45:04PM *  4 points [-]

"Innately" is being used in that post in the sense of being a fundamental personality trait or a strong predisposition (as in "Correspondance Bias", to which that post is a followup). And fundamental personality traits and predispositions do exist — including some that actually do predispose people toward being evil (e.g. sociopathy) — so, although the phrase "innately evil" is a bit dramatic, I find its meaning clear enough in that post's context that I don't think it's a mistake similar to "fundamentally moral". It's not arguing about whether there's a ghostly detachable property called "evil" that's independent of any normal facts about a person's mind and history.